If virtue be the spring of a popular government in times of peace, the spring of that government during a revolution is virtue combined with terror: virtue, without which terror is destructive; terror, without which virtue is impotent. Terror is only justice prompt, severe and inflexible; it is then an emanation of virtue; it is less a distinct principle than a natural consequence of the general principle of democracy, applied to the most pressing wants of the country.

It has been said that terror is the spring of despotic government. Does yours then resemble despotism? Yes, as the steel that glistens in the hands of the heroes of liberty resembles the sword with which the satellites of tyranny are armed. Let the despot govern by terror his debased subjects; he is right as a despot: conquer by terror the enemies of liberty and you will be right as founders of the republic. The government in a revolution is the despotism of liberty against tyranny. Is force only intended to protect crime? Is not the lightning of heaven made to blast vice exalted?

Maximilien Robespierre.

On the Principles of Political Morality, February 1794

The Proclamation of the

Duke of Brunswick, 1792

Convinced that the sane portion of the French nation abhors the excesses of the faction which dominates it, and that the majority of the people look forward with impatience to the time when they may declare themselves openly against the odious enterprises of their oppressors, his Majesty the emperor and his Majesty the king of Prussia call upon them and invite them to return without delay to the path of reason, justice, order, and peace. In accordance with these views, I, the undersigned, the commander in chief of the two armies, declare:

1. That, drawn into this war by irresistible circumstances, the two allied courts entertain no other aims than the welfare of France, and have no intention of enriching themselves by conquests.

2. That they do not propose to meddle in the internal government of France, and that they merely wish to deliver the king, the queen, and the royal family from their captivity, and procure for his Most Christian Majesty the necessary security to enable him, without danger or hindrance, to make such engagements as he shall see fit, and to work for the welfare of his subjects, according to his pledges.

3. That the allied armies will protect the towns and villages, and the persons and goods of those who shall submit to the king and who shall cooperate in the immediate reestablishment of order and the police power throughout France.

4. That, on the contrary, the members of the National Guard who shall fight against the troops of the two allied courts, and who shall be taken with arms in their hands, shall be treated as enemies and punished as rebels to their king and as disturbers of the public peace. . . .

7. That the inhabitants of the towns and villages who may dare to defend themselves against the troops of their Imperial and Royal Majesties and fire on them, either in the open country or through windows, doors, and openings in their houses, shall be punished immediately according to the most stringent laws of war, and their houses shall be burned or destroyed. . . .

8. The city of Paris and all its inhabitants without distinction shall be required to submit at once and without delay to the king, to place that prince in full and complete liberty, and to assure to him, as well as to the other royal personages, the inviolability and respect which the law of nature and of nations demands of subjects toward sovereigns. . .Their said Majesties declare, on their word of honor as emperor and king, that if the chateau of the Tuileries is entered by force or attacked, if the least violence be offered to their Majesties the king, queen, and royal family, and if their safety and their liberty be not immediately assured, they will inflict an ever memorable vengeance by delivering over the city of Paris to military execution and complete destruction, and the rebels guilty of the said outrages to the punishment that they merit. . . .

Finally, I pledge myself, in my own name and in my said capacity, to cause the troops entrusted to my command to observe good and strict discipline, promising to treat with kindness and moderation all well-intentioned subjects who show themselves peaceful and submissive, and to use force only against those who shall be guilty of resistance and ill will.

It is for these reasons that I call upon and exhort in the most urgent manner all the inhabitants of the kingdom not to oppose the movements and operations of the troops which I command, but rather, on the contrary, to grant them everywhere a free passage and to assist and aid them with all good will as circumstances shall demand.

Given at the headquarters at Coblenz, July 25, 1792.

CHARLES WILLIAM FERDINAND,

Duke of Brunswick-Luneburg.

Hanover Historical Texts Project

Maximilien de Robespierre: guillotining the executioner

Cartoon engraving

The Bettmann Archive

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/media/38500/Cartoon-engraving-of-Maximilien-de-Robespierre-guillotining-the-executioner-during

Anonymous caricature depicting the treatment given to the Brunswick Manifesto by the French population

Library of Congress description: "Print shows four figures representing foreign nations responding unfavorably to the manifesto issued by the Duke of Brunswick and Lüneburg on July 25 1792. A fifth figure representing Fame (an angel with trumpet) flies overhead holding a sign labeled 'République Française'."

Proclamation of the Convention to the Nations, December 1792

http://history.hanover.edu/texts/natcon.html#1

We have conquered our liberty and we shall maintain it. We offer to bring this inestimable blessing to you, for it has always been rightly ours, and only by a crime have our oppressors robbed us of it. We have driven out your tyrants. Show yourselves free men and we will protect you from their vengeance, their machinations, or their return.

Edmund Burke

Reflections on the French Revolution - 1790

This was unnatural. The rest is in order. They have found their punishment in their success: laws overturned; tribunals subverted; industry without vigor; commerce expiring; the revenue unpaid, yet the people impoverished; a church pillaged, and a state not relieved; civil and military anarchy made the constitution of the kingdom; everything human and divine sacrificed to the idol of public credit, and national bankruptcy the consequence; and, to crown all, the paper securities of new, precarious, tottering power, the discredited paper securities of impoverished fraud and beggared rapine, held out as a currency for the support of an empire in lieu of the two great recognized species that represent the lasting, conventional credit of mankind, which disappeared and hid themselves in the earth from whence they came, when the principle of property, whose creatures and representatives they are, was systematically subverted.

TheMarseillaise

Let us go, children of the fatherland

Our day of Glory has arrived.

Against us stands tyranny,

The bloody flag is raised,

The bloody flag is raised.

Do you hear in the countryside

The roar of these savage soldiers

They come right into our arms

To cut the throats of your sons,

your country.

To arms, citizens!

Form up your battalions

Let us march, Let us march!

That their impure blood

Should water our fields

Sacred love of the fatherland

Guide and support our vengeful arms.

Liberty, beloved liberty,

Fight with your defenders;

Fight with your defenders.

Under our flags, so that victory

Will rush to your manly strains;

That your dying enemies

Should see your triumph and glory

To arms, citizens!

Form up your battalions

Let us march, Let us march!

That their impure blood

Should water our fields

In '93, according as the idea which was afloat was good or bad, according as it was the day of fanaticism or of enthusiasm, there came from the Faubourg Saint Antoine sometimes savage legions, sometimes heroic bands.

Savage. We must explain this word. What was the aim of those bristling men who in the demiurgic days of revolutionary chaos, ragged, howling, wild, with tomahawk raised, and pike aloft, rushed over old overturned Paris? They desired the end of Opressions, the end of Tyrannies, the end of the sword, labour for man, instruction for children, social gentleness for women, liberty, equality, fraternity, bread for all, ideas for all. They were savages, yes; but the savages of civilisation.

Les Miserables, Saint Denis, Book First, Chapter V

How did the Reign of Terror affect the bourgeois? 

Did the Reign of Terror change French society?

King

Noble man

Servant

Maid

Apprentice

Merchant

Manufacturer

Lawyer 

Doctor

How do you feel about the King? Danton? Robespierre?

What level of social hierarchy are you in? Level 1, 2 or 3?

Did you participate in the storming of Bastille?